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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to surprising experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders sharing stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem quirky, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, helping the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a former journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to shift your outlook or trigger some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is among various features in Sara's engaging art project honoring the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the people's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the lengthy entrance incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, moss. The condition is a result of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported containers of food pellets on to the barren tundra to provide manually. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy pieces. This costly and laborious procedure is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others drowning after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the installation is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the sharp difference between the industrial view of energy as a resource to be harnessed for profit and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate power in creatures, individuals, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of use."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, art appears the only sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|